ReBuilding Center helping their community to get the job done

Based in Portland Oregon, Rebuilding Center are a not-for-profit working hard on recovering reusable building materials and seeing them repurposed in their community. But their work goes way beyond that. Inside their 2,800 square metre warehouse is a fully kitted out woodworking classroom. 

 

The workshop is intended to enable the community to gain skills in home repairs, woodworking, repurposing materials and gaining decorating skills such as mosaic. On the day I visited, a class of local high school students were just wrapping up a class on woodworking skills, creating laminated chopping blocks.

  

With the pandemic creating a new set of needs in the Portland area, ReBuilding Center reoriented itself to become not just a reclaim and salvage operation, they are positioning themselves to be climate justice advocate for their community. This involves making people better equipped maintain and develop their homes, something that is often difficult for many people to achieve practically and financially. 

 

As well as free classes in their amazing workshop, they offer free materials and delivery for those who need to undertake repairs on their house but are otherwise unable to afford them. Their mobile shop also helps take down the barriers to repair for those who have difficulty visiting their warehouse. 

 

ReBuilding Center are also active in de-nailing recovered timber onsite. This is an activity that provides another area of their operation providing community outreach. De-nailing allows people looking for training, work experience or volunteer opportunities to be integrated in a safe and well set-up location. Organisations such as Nike send staff to de-nail timber, making a useful and social event for their team.

   

Benches to facilitate de-nailing are paired with good old fashioned claw hammers and crow bars. In addition, they have state of the art compressed air tools to both pull out nails and blow them through timber. 

This organisation are focused, organised and active on retrieving and repurposing construction and demolition waste but they do this in a way that deeply embeds them into the Portland’s community.

 

Thanks to Mackendree for hosting me at ReBuilding Center.

https://www.rebuildingcenter.org/